As Experts in Local SEO Strategy, We Have Experiences to Share that Help Small Businesses Online

As of October 2013, Google Plus had a total of 300 million monthly active users. During the same time, the platform recorded 20 million unique monthly mobile users. Given the fact that Google+ is a new entrant in the social media arena, these figures are no doubt impressive.

Google Plus incorporates some of the best features of popular social media networks that millions of internet users are already familiar with.

What’s in it for a marketer, you’d ask!

Well, it is a Google product.

This invariably means that the search engine giant is here to take all steps necessary to increase adoption of Google Plus. So, make hay while the sun shines.

You can use Google Plus for search engine optimization (SEO) as well as online reputation management (ORM). Here’s a compilation of 7 ways Google Plus can help improve search results for your business:

1. Fast Crawling

Content shared on Google+ is crawled almost immediately. Not all posts will make it to Google’s Index or figure in your Author Stats account but immediate crawling does go a long way in ensuring quick and enhanced visibility.

After Google-Twitter deal for real time indexing of latter’s content expired in 2011, it was only natural for Google to find new ways to ‘discover’ interesting content.

2. +1 is now a Popularity Ranking Social Signal

Just as people like a business’s Facebook page, they can also +1 its Google+ page. Businesses having more +1’s are looked upon as popular, credible or an authority on the subject.

3. Make the Best Use of Platform Search

Content shared with relevant #Hashtags is likely to appear in platform’s search results.

Regular updates on Google+ can therefore help a business connect to more (like-minded) people by improving its discoverability.

4. Posts Have a Longer Life Span

Google+ content has PageRank and may appear in search results for as long as 1 year.

Tweets as well as Google+ posts are crawled almost immediately, but the former have a very short life span. The only exception to this well accepted rule occurs when certain tweets are so popular that they continue to rank well for some brand/issue specific or long tail search queries.

5. Powerful Social Signals

As the World Wide Web grows bigger with each passing minute (640TB of data is transmitted each minute on to the Internet) and internet marketers from around the world try out every possible technique in the book to manipulate search results, search engines have begin to lend more importance to social signals.

According to Moz.com, the total number of Google +1’s on a web page is most correlated with search engine rankings after Page Authority.

6. Link Equity

Pages and posts shared on Google Plus do not just gain PageRank. Links on Google+ are followed and therefore, they provide link equity to shared URLs.

It’s important to note that only shared links (and not links embedded within the content) are followed.

7. Semantic Relevance

Only a handful of people are aware of this fact. All of Google+ has been optimize for excellent semantic relevance. Each Google+ post, for example, has its own URL. The initial 40-50 characters in a post show up in title tag and you can create long, informative and useful posts/pages for better rankings.

Google+ is gathering momentum and since it’s a Google product, there’s a good chance it will soon emerge as a social media force to reckon with.

If you’d like to know how to make the best use of Google Plus for business promotion and improved search engine rankings, get in touch with Whiteboard Creations today.